Rats Saw God (22 page)

“Happy birthday, baby,” she gushed, trying out a fresh pet name.

Despite making out at every red light and stopping at the astronaut's to drop off my luggage, we eventually arrived at Dub's place. The sun was just beginning to set when we got there, but the temperature would probably not dip below the century mark for another couple months. I was surprised to find us alone in the air-conditioned sanctuary of the house.

“They'll be gone for hours. I've sent them to the movies.”

I tried to imagine the astronaut's reaction had I attempted shooing him off so I could have the house to myself and my girlfriend. Dub took my hand and led me, not to the bedroom as expected, but to the dining room table already set for two. The cloth-lined basket of French bread, lead crystal decanter of petite sirah, white tapers in a silver candelabra, and expensivelooking China clued me in: Dub had cooked. She lit the candles with a long wooden match which she withdrew from a decanter. Her hand trembled nervously as she did so. She dimmed the lights and instructed me to pour the wine. She disappeared for a moment before I heard Nat King Cole's voice come purring in through the room's speakers.

I filled both glasses like a regular Don Juan, took my first sip, and remembered that I didn't like wine. It always tasted bitter and made all the moisture on my tongue evaporate. I could hear oven and refrigerator doors rasping open and slamming shut as well as the scraping of utensils against dishes. She returned carrying a bowl of fettuccine Alfredo and a platter with two breasts of chicken Parmesan. She set them down, took a sip of her own wine, circled the table, hugged me from behind, and returned to her seat.

“Happy birthday,” she announced proudly. “Now eat.”

And I tried. I really tried, but…

It's difficult, really, deciding where to start on this: the Alfredo sauce had congealed on top of the soggy noodles to forge a chocolate dipped conelike shell; the insides of the chicken breasts were still registering a pulse while the breaded shell had achieved a driveway oil stain tint; the water-thin marinara sauce fled the breast and formed a pink
sea surrounding Poultry Island in the middle of my plate. I kept my head bowed. I chewed and chewed, then chiseled off another bite, and continued to chew. I hadn't made much headway when I sensed that Dub had stopped eating and was watching me. I didn't look up though. I was afraid she would ask me how everything was.

“Please stop trying to eat this. I'll be even sadder if I have to rush you to the hospital,” she said. I took in her face. A tear fell down to her monumental mouth. I thought she looked beautiful. “I suck. I wanted this to be perfect.”

“It is. It's a perfect night.”

“I love you,” she said.

In saying so, she lessened my “I love you” lead to 946 to 1. She wiped her eyes and started laughing. “You don't even want to
see
the birthday cake.” Covering her meal with her napkin, Dub stood. “Follow me,” she said.

The double French doors of Dub's room were uncurtained. They opened out to the patio that stretched across the back of the house and overlooked the backyard. The lights were off in the bedroom, but the outside lights streamed through the door windows and allowed my eyes to adjust easily. Dub inserted a Lenny Kravitz cassette into her jambox.

“Come here,” she directed from beside her bed. I stood before her, feeling suddenly young. Images of playing with Tonka dump trucks and running from cootied girls at recess played through my mind as Dub unbuttoned my shirt.

“Do you want to do this?” Dub asked.

“I think so.”

We undressed each other as if the process would later be
described in sonnets. Each garment removed, whether preciously draped over a chair or lustily cast to the floor, was a verse. Okay, the part involving shoe removal would have best been described in a limerick. I ended up standing naked from my ankles up, hopping on one foot, then the other, as Dub untied my Chuck Taylors and pulled each Levi leg over my foot. I wanted for all the world to have this act be the melding of two kindred souls, the uniting of two perfectly matched bodies, but I would have lost my balance. When Dub finally relieved me of my last shred of clothing, I resisted the urge to cover the titanium love barometer between my legs. Was it the right size? The right shape? The right color? Would Dub know whether it was? It was the first time she had seen it. She had rubbed it through my blue jeans, and we had goomed up my shorts dry humping until I thought I would die, but this was the first time Junior had the pleasure of meeting a woman in the flesh. Dub gripped the shaft and gave it a couple preliminary tugs. I lost my breath.

“How does that feel?” she asked, genuinely curious.

In a moment of epiphany I realized that every sensual pleasure in my lifetime would be compared to this. How could I describe how sex felt when nothing so far—roller coasters, shower massages, coin-operated beds—approached this sensation. As a graying middle-ager I might describe landing a marlin as feeling like great sex, but right now, I sure couldn't tell Dub that what she was doing to me felt like catching a fish.

“Nice,” I answered.

Mom fell in love with Warren Beatty in the movie
Splendor in the Grass.
After that, she never missed one of his
flicks. We owned them all on videotape. Earlier during the summer, with little else to do, I watched most of the collection. In
Splendor,
Beatty plays an in-heat teenage boy (Is there any other kind?) cursed with a girlfriend, Natalie Wood, who won't round second base. She goes crazy; he marries a beautiful Spanish woman. That made sense. What terrified me was one of the mid-period Beatty offerings,
Shampoo.
In a final scene, we find Beatty putting it to Julie Christie on a guest house floor, his naked butt ramming away pistonlike. Strings don't swell. The director doesn't cut away to hands entwining. Unless you count “oh yes,” no tender words were spoken. Watching it unfold, I had a flash. Maybe sex isn't indulging in each heartfelt caress. Maybe sex is friction, pure and simple.

These thoughts cluttered my mind as I loomed in pushup position over Dub's naked body. My triceps were going rubbery. I didn't quite understand the hold up here. Given the opportunity, I believe I could have used Junior to cut glass. I began doubting she had an orifice down there. Continuing to make what I hoped where sexy noises, I tried again. Brick wall. Dub sighed.

“Let's roll over,” she said.

After trading positions, Dub began grinding into me. As she did, the meeting point turned into this veritable tropical rain forest. She started breathing harder. I don't think I would have lasted through this had I not been sheathed in latex. Clumsily we charged toward lost innocence.

Dub raised her haunches and reached back between my legs. She positioned Junior in rocket ship perpendicularity and then lowered herself down onto me. I realized five or six seconds
after the actual event that I was inside her, that I was no longer a virgin, that I would finally be allowed to hunt buffalo with the village elders. I could almost feel my complexion clearing up. For autobiographical accuracy, I noted the digital clock read 9:20. Now what? Dub started rocking back and forth. I attempted to thrust in a matching rhythm, but it seemed like every time she zigged, I zagged. Twice I fell out and had to be reinserted. That particular trick, at least, became easier to accomplish. After the second time, I convinced Dub that we should try this the old-fashioned way. Back on top, I became the master of my destiny. Initially I set a leisurely tempo, but as the pleasure index increased, so did my hip speed. Dub had both hands around my neck, and I gave up trying to gaze into her eyes during the act. I let my face sink into the pillow beside her shoulder. The condom I was wearing was numbing most sensation coming from the South Pole, but the peripheral stimulation was electric: the way our sweaty bodies were sliding across each other, Dub's fingernails digging into my neck, her irregular panting, the lemony scent of fabric softener on the pillowcases.

After years of self-service, I recognized the signs of impending orgasm—the tingle, the shortening of breath, my testicles' desire to join my lungs. I pushed myself up when I reached the point of no return. Dub's eyes were closed, and she was biting her lower lip. And then it was over. As I stopped my pushing and pulling, Dub's eyes opened.

“Did you?” she asked.

I nodded. She leaned up and kissed me tenderly. The clock read 9:26.

I put in two solid minutes of snuggling, but in the back of
my mind I was reviewing the instructions that came with the box of condoms. There was more to proper use than I would have imagined. Take, for example, the sixth and final step. The manufacturer recommended that I grip the sides of the condom when I pulled out. The latex felt like such a second skin that I hardly believed we were in danger of it slipping off, but I did as instructed. I was surprised that the reservoir tip contained only a moderate amount of fluid. It felt like there should be a billiard ball–sized globe at the end. I walked naked and embarrassed to the bathroom adjoining Dub's room. There I removed the condom. Though it wasn't in the instructions, I tied off the end before flushing it down the commode. I didn't want some renegade sperm scaling the porcelain and slithering into bed with my partner.

I opened the door of the bathroom to find the lights had been turned on. Dub, dressed only in a T-shirt, sat across the room in a pink high-backed armless chair. She had wrapped her arms around her knees, drawing them up against her chest. Her eyes were the only part of her face I could see, and they weren't looking at me. My clothes, unfortunately, were on the opposite side of the bed closest to her.

“Do you know why the French call these armless chairs boudoir chairs?” Dub asked. I dove on the bed before answering in the negative. “It's because Louis
quatorze
liked boffing sitting down. He ordered armless chairs put in all the ladies' bedrooms at Versailles.” I sat up at the edge of the bed, a corner of bedspread covering my privates, and fished for my boxers with my toes. Thankfully, Dub still wasn't looking at me in all my au naturel glory. Louis
quatorze,
I guessed, would have
paraded to his underwear, commanded the satisfied noblewoman to salute his manhood, or quite possibly, simply exited naked. Suddenly Dub looked at me. I blushed. I felt I should say something.

“Funny. We didn't get that particular lesson in French.”

“Do you feel any different?”

“No. What about you?”

“I feel sad. Like I've closed a door behind me and I'll never be able to go back. Like my dad doesn't have to love me anymore.” She rocked herself back and forth in her chair. “And it really wasn't as big a deal as I thought it would be.”

Then I was in a hurry to leave. Abandoning the safety of the bed, I collected my clothes and dressed quickly. I was gone before her parents came home. She didn't try to make me stay.

We saw each other the next day and tried to pretend it hadn't happened. We reenacted our Galveston road trip, but we didn't kiss with the same ferocity, and we didn't try quite as hard to impress each other. I flew back to California with eleven condoms to my name.

Allison was in Palo Alto, visiting Stanford. Had I remembered Mom and Chuck were having a party that Friday, I would have endured the free verse and cloves of a late night at Cap's. The living room and deck bustled with pilots, stewardesses, and real estate agents. They seemed to get on famously. I tried slipping into the kitchen to snake some of the Hawaiian meatballs Mom always makes when she entertains.
I was cut off by a sun-bleached blonde.

“Here he is! Here he is, Cindy! You're right. I hardly recognize him. Why he's such a young
man.
” The woman, a few fuzzy navels over her limit, motioned for my mother, then she turned back around. “I'll bet you don't even recognize me.” She was right. Others crowded into the kitchen pivoted to regard me. I swear, the empathy was palpable. “Maybe this will refresh your memory.”

Then the woman grabbed my shoulders, pulled me down to her level (literally and figuratively), and kissed me. If I was initially dismayed, think of how I felt when her tongue came swishing past my teeth.

“Judy! Stop that! You are going to embarrass him to death. He's too young for you, and besides, he has a girlfriend.” The voice was my mom's and the tone was jovial but unequivocal. “Son, are you okay? You must remember Judy. She used to be our receptionist at the office.”

A lightbulb. It was the ghost of office parties past. “I remember you now.” I didn't mean it humorously, but the crowd chuckled anyway. Judy seemed unoffended. Mom went around the circle introducing me to co-workers of hers and Chuck's. I didn't remember a single name by the time she finished.

“Steve's graduating next month,” Mom announced.

“Where are you going to college? USC's looking for some go-getters,” said a pilot. He punched my shoulder with the side of his fist. I mentally nixed any possible future as a Trojan.